His reasoning being that Star Wars is better because it caters to a wider audience, has a larger budget and better CGI.

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Those are reasons why Star Wars is more profitable. (You could also add, Star Wars has more kid appeal, which is a big boost to toy sales, where the real money is.) I doubt Disney would have paid $4 billion for the rights to Star Trek. But noneof that has any bearing on inherent quality.

Neither is superior to the other, since both can be done well or poorly. At the most basic level, Star Trek is about ideas and Star Wars is about emotion. People are more likely to seek out emotional experiences in their entertainment, so Star Wars is more profitable. But there's nothing bad about that.

So when you turn Star Trek into a movie, it naturally must get more Star Warsy. But the reverse is also true - The Clone Wars has more detailed and convincing character psychology and political plotlines than I've ever seen in Star Wars before, and in fact, it's better than much of Star Trek (though still well below DS9's standard.)

But if I had to choose, I'd have to say I'm much more drawn into the Star Trek universe because of the richness of the characters like Data & Odo & the stories related to humanity, identity, etc.

Of course Star Wars is great but it's more of a less serious action-adventure type entertainment (as you had correctly pointed out) that the casual viewer can enjoy. Star Trek is for more serious & hardcore sci-fi fans in my opinion as there is more to follow & watch.

The funny thing is, I agree with his analysis but don't think it's a condemnation of Star Wars - but rather evidence that people like fascism enough to spend money on it. And what's the harm, they're buying toys and movie tickets, not voting for political candidates. Let them indulge in a little power-fantasy fascism, it's just for fun. (And then make them watch an equal amount of Star Trek as the antidote.)

If Lucas had embraced the inherent fascism of his creation rather than running away from it, the prequels wold have been much better. He should have recognized that Darth Vader was the most popular of the OT characters back when the movies were first released (something I'm old enough to remember first hand) because of the fascistic appeal of unchecked power.

Anakin should have been cool like Vader was cool. He could still be chucked in he volcano at the end as his comeuppance, so that the overall message is, "fascism is bad, mkay?" but it would have been fun to watch him up till that point.

Sabotaging him by making him a whiney weakling was the worst thing Lucas could have done. But if Star Wars is best handled by fascists, Lucas selling out to Disney bodes very well for the franchise's health.

Well, one thing that can be said for the Star Trek world is that it can give hope that what we know in the here and now isn't where it will all end. Star Wars is in a galaxy FAR FAR away. Star Trek is in the HERE, just not now. It shows how it is possible for the problems of the twenty and twenty-first centuries to eventually become obsolete. So in essence, one big draw for Trek is the HOPE that humanity can grow and not just eliminate ourselves through war and intolerance.

Farscape is the best science fiction franchise, so this argument is invalid. And Firefly managed to do what neither of the "Star" franchises ever did by never having a bad episode. Also BSG before New Caprica.

So I was having this ol' debate with a friend the other day, my friend being a Star Wars fan. His reasoning being that Star Wars is better because it caters to a wider audience, has a larger budget and better CGI. But for me, he just isn't getting it. Trek is just so much more involving for me. Not only is there much much more content out there to experience, but its reflection of real world issues, and its cultural diversity make it for me. I don't think I need to even point out that Star Wars has Jar Jar.

So, I wonder how many reasons we can come up with that Star Trek is better than Star Wars (or the other way round perhaps, for arguments sake).

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1) The debate is silly.
The only thing those shows have in common is the word "Star"; therefore, the only people qualified to draw parallels are all called Matt Groening.
On account of lulziness.

2) Your friend's arguments are really terrible.
- Popularity? If popularity equals quality, Lady Gaga is a better composer than Beethoven; Transformers 2 & Titanic better movies than Citizen Kane & 12 Angry Men; Green Day a better band than Dissection (obviously impossible, as Storm of the Light's Bane is perfection in musical form); a coloured square into another coloured square (contemporary paintings are often that ridiculous - and people gobble them up) better painting than Bruegel's The Tower of Babel.
If there's any correlation between popularity and quality, it's inverse, not direct.

- Quality of the CGI?
If he judges a movie solely on its CGI, he's going to miss out on a lot of great movies with no CGI whatsoever.
I'm also not certain the CGI quality is better in Wars: ENT had some very good CGI.

- Budget?
Seriously?

With the exception of some specific genres of movies (porn, action, martial arts,...), plot and dialogue should be the measuring stick of quality and on that front, Wars' manichean fare doesn't rate high.

3) Some of your own arguments are invalid, notably the Jar Jar one: Star Wars has Jar Jar, Star Trek has Neelix.
I've never seen any Wars movie in its entirety, but I highly doubt Jar Jar is worse than Neelix.